Teaching the English language to a non english speaking person can be exciting and interesting. If this is of interest to you, consider traveling to other countries to teach….

I kind of shudder at how I abandoned two great teachers who had gone way out of their way to help me when I was in high school. When I went off to college, I never looked back, and it must have hurt them to see me go. But, I’m sure they experienced that feeling many times over.

I disagree with you about the skill level needed to teach even elementary school. While the required knowledge is more general than high school, elementary school teachers need to have a solid foundation in mathematics, science, english and social studies. You can only teach what you know, and your knowledge level has to be beyond what you’re teaching in order to respond to all levels of student. If you have a limited knowledge of math, for instance, how many different ways are you going to be able to come up with to explain, say, fractions for both slow students who may have trouble keeping up, and advanced students who are eager to move to the next level?

As a (former) musician, I’ve observed that while some great pianists have been lousy teachers, I doubt that a lousy pianist has ever been a great teacher. IMHO, of course.

Or put it this way, if you’re taking skydiving lessons, what kind of teacher would you look for?

My point is that the teaching profession puts an overemphasis on the theory and process of learning, and underemphasises the knowlegdge required of the teacher. This is true especially at the junior and high school level.

I’ve also been reading about how “No Child Left Behind” has hurt the best and brightest students at the expense of the slower ones. Schools are putting all of the resources at helping slower students pass the required tesets - the advanced students will pass anyway and thus are of less interest to the school.

Now, the principle behind the managers was to provide effective evaluation of the teachers–basically, did they teach well?–so that you could adopt a merit pay system, so that better teachers would get paid more. That way the lazy and overbearing teachers you mentioned above would be paid comparatively less than the teachers who churn out the best and brightest by the classful.

There just aren’t that many good teachers. Some are consumed with theory, and don’t know anything about the subject they’re teaching. Its been widely shown that American educators are weak on subject content. Teachers tend to be about the process - not the product. Its all about the process of learning for them and they’re not that interested in whether students actually learn anything.

Friday’s Wall Street Journal had an excellent article about wacky new theories in teaching mathmatics. The WSJ made the point that drug companies would never be allowed to experiment on consumers the way the teaching industry experiments on students - with entire generations messed up as a result.

Many teachers went into teaching for 3 reasons: June, July and August. Some are control freaks who care more about breaking the will of their students than teaching them anything.

I’m not sure what more managers will accomplish, except to update the old adage to “those who can’t teach manage.”

With a few exceptions, my memories of teachers are of petty, stupid, and small minded people.

Teaching has to become a better profession including a job track, higher pay, more rigorous requirements, and the end to teachers unions.